by Dan Mitchell | Jan 4, 2025 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Donald Trump played Santa Claus in his first term, with both tax cuts and big spending increases. Unsurprisingly, he wants to play Santa Claus in his second term as well. But he faces a couple of big challenges. First, as I wrote about two...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 31, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Taxation, Welfare and Entitlements
Sticking with tradition (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, etc), it’s time for my annual column summarizing the best and worst things that happened during the year. Let’s start with the good developments. And it should be obvious what will be my first...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 20, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending, States
During Trump’s first term, he was a big spender. He even wound up increasing domestic spending at a faster rate than Barack Obama. What can we expect in a second term? A week after the election, as part of my “Second Edition of Trump” series, I speculated...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 12, 2024 | Blogs, Trade
In Part I of this series, I showed that there has been a long-run decline of manufacturing employment in the United States, but pointed out that it is silly to blame this drop on trade agreements such as NAFTA or the WTO. What’s really happened is...
by Dan Mitchell | Dec 3, 2024 | Big Government, Blogs, Government Spending
Donald Trump was a big spender during his first term in office. Even if you don’t count the orgy of pandemic-related spending, he spent more and spent faster than Barack Obama. He even increased domestic spending faster than Obama!...
